Chinese 'underground' priest arrested: a bid to stop Marian pilgrimages?

May 27, 2015

A priest of China’s “underground” Catholic Church was arrested on May 7 and remains missing, the AsiaNews service reports.

Father Liu Honggeng was taken from his post at a Marian shrine in Baoding because government officials want to “prevent pilgrimages to his church,” a local Catholic told AsiaNews. The priest was preparing the shrine for May, a month traditionally devoted to Marian pilgrimages.

Father Liu Honggeng has already spent eight years in prison, after refusing to join the government-sponsored Catholic Patriotic Association.

 

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Further information:

• As the parish priest at Baoding’s Mary Queen of China Church is arrested, another Catholic altar is demolished (AsiaNews)